He was 18 when the brutal junta in Argentina sent him to fight in the Falklands. Mario Oscar Nuñez would come to remember the isolated islands for ever, not for the death and carnage that he witnessed fighting the British but for the “lifelong humiliation”at the hands of his own side.

A boy from Mercedes, a rural town in the northern province of Corrientes,he had been conscripted into the army, like many of his fellow fighters, through national military service. As a member of Argentina’s 12th Infantry Regiment, Mr Nuñez was stationed at Goose Green on East Falkland, a bleak outpost about 50 miles (80km) from the capital, Port Stanley.

Now 45, he is one of almost 120 soldiers who have given testimony in a landmark court case alleging human rights abuses including murder, torture and starvation by Argentine commanding officers.

A judge in Tierra del Fuego took the former combatants a step closer to justice last week with a ruling that such practices constituted crimes against humanity. The accounts include those of one soldier shot dead by a senior officer and four who starved to death. Other accusations include staking, beating and forced servitude.

Times Archive, 1982: Goose Green taken by paratroopers

Port Darwin and the airfield at Goose Green were back in British hands last night

• Nazi tactics alleged

• Cheers of liberation in the early afternoon

More than 70 officers face prosecution; many of them are still serving in the Argentine Army. Many of the abuses came as punishments after starving conscripts resorted to desperate measures to survive the 1982 conflict.

“Conditions in the Falklands were adverse,” Mr Nuñez told The Times. “Temperatures were very low. Food was very scarce and we began to lose a lot of weight very rapidly.”

On May 19 a colleague, Secundino Riquelme, died of starvation. “We said it was going to be us next,” Mr Nuñez said. Faced with this fear, he and two other soldiers took the decision to kill a sheep. The three men were skinning the sheep when they were discovered by Sub-Lieutenant Gustavo Malacalza, who was accompanied by some soldiers. “They started kicking and stamping on us. Finally came the staking.”

Mr Nuñez and his two colleagues were stripped almost naked and staked to the ground, their arms and legs stretched out painfully to form crosses on the cold, wet earth.

“We were like that for eight hours, in great physical pain, with few clothes and very cold, close to freezing.”

Halfway through their punishment, Sub-Lieutenant Malacalza returned. “We could not tolerate the situation any more so we asked that he either release or kill us. He pointed a gun at me and said that I wasn’t worth the shot. He then started to kick me in the ribs.”

The men were convinced that they would die where they lay, Mr Nuñez said. “If it hadn’t been for a sergeant, Guillermo Insaurralde, who came across us by chance, we would not be here to tell this story today.”

Mr Nuñez said that such abuses were commonplace and had “a great impact” on their ability to fight. The regiment was defeated on May 29 during the Battle of Goose Green, before Britain’s final victory on June 14. About 30,000 troops, including 12,000 conscripts, were deployed during the Argentine invasion of the Falklands, the island group 670 miles off the country’s Atlantic coast known in Latin America as Las Malvinas.

The offensive, launched on April 2, 1982, was a desperate attempt at diversion by a military regime in its death throes. The defeat led to the downfall of the dictator Leopoldo Galtieri after a seven-year “dirty war” by the junta against its own people, during which an estimated 9,000 to 30,000 people “disappeared”.

Since the Falklands conflict more than 400 former combatants have taken their own lives. Pablo Vassel, a lawyer who, as sub-secretary for human rights in the province of Corrientes, compiled the original case, said that it was part of dealing with the pain that the country had suffered at the hands of a violent and authoritarian regime, and of ensuring that such aberrations were “never repeated”.

“These soldiers are sons of the Argentine people,” he told The Times. “They have had to bear great shame. We have to understand the importance of what they were victim to.”

Mr Nuñez recalls it as “the worst humiliation” of his life.

Battle of Goose Green

• The battle of Goose Green was from May 28-29

• About 1,000 Argentine troops were taken prisoner

• 50 Argentine soldiers were killed, 90 wounded

• 600 troops of 2 Para were involved

• 16 were killed, including 2 Para commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel ‘H’ Jones. 36 were wounded

• 112 civilians were released unharmed

• Colonel Jones received posthumous Victoria Cross Source: Official History of Falklands Campaign

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